They just looked too strange: Not like chicken! But when McDonald’s started selling their Chicken McNuggets, a term which they trademarked, the public was willing to give them a try, and they’ve been a mainstay ever since. This is often the case with new food inventions. However, Baker’s nuggets never proved very popular. He also invented the classic, Cornell Chicken Barbecue Sauce, as well as turkey ham, and poultry hot dogs (something better left uninvented?) He was a poultry science and food science professor at the prestigious Cornell University, one of the leading centers of food research in the country. Robert Baker wasn’t just some kitchen tinkerer. Since then, the basic way chicken nuggets are made hasn’t changed much, although the quality and proportions of the ingredients used may vary. He was looking for a way to use leftover chicken and he actually published his recipe in the 1950s without bothering to patent the invention. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.The inventor was a food scientist named Robert Baker, who thought up these crispy little nuggets in the 1950s. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. You can find the recipe for that sauce at our web site, NPR.org.Ĭopyright © 2006 NPR. NORRIS: And this Sunday at Lansing Methodist, there will be a barbecue, and it will feature Mr. Baker's unique contributions to the food industry, above all, the creation of chicken nuggets. SIEGEL: That's Joseph Hotchkiss, Chairman of the Food Science Department at Cornell University, remembering his former colleague Robert C. When he got very good at the poultry thing, people said, gee, we would like to have you do this for fish, and he made some fish products that were tested in some of the public schools and stuff that, I think, he thought were pretty good, but young people just didn't like at all, and so he did have a number of failures as well. HOTCHKISS: Oh, yeah, there were a number of failures. He also had his failures, says Hotchkiss. NORRIS: Among Robert Baker's many poultry related accomplishments, he was inducted into the American Poultry Hall of Fame in 2004. How do you make a breading attach to a piece of chicken so that you can fry it and cook it, and people can eat it and it'll all be the same without the breading falling off? HOTCHKISS: That seems trivial to us, but in a large part, that happened because Bob Baker studied in a scientific way. SIEGEL: Hotchkiss says Robert Baker saw problems in poultry products, problems like getting the breading to stick to the chicken, and he tried to fix them. JOSEPH HOTCHKISS (Food Science Department, Cornell University): At the time that Bob Baker started in this, there were almost no other poultry products outside of the whole broiler chicken that you might find in the grocery store, and there's hardly a poultry product out there that doesn't somewhere have a little Bob Baker in its history. Joseph Hotchkiss is Chairman of the Food Science Department at Cornell. Baker always had a stand at the New York State Fair, Baker's Chicken Coop, and his chicken barbecue, with its famous Cornell sauce, was specifically asked for by President Clinton when he visited the fair in 1999. In addition to developing chicken nuggets, he is also responsible for ground poultry, turkey ham, poultry hot dogs and many other poultry innovations. Baker, a longtime professor of poultry science and food science at Cornell University. Well, the man responsible for the popularity of chicken nuggets has died. They even inspired characters in McDonald's cartoons. Chicken nuggets, some can't remember what children ate before chigen nuggets came on the market.
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